It’s not a great book/article whatever. It’s not bad, but the original aspect of it doesn’t add to the body of work about what went on there.
Here are the important factors:
1) It was all about oil. And of course still is. Stalingrad(today’s Volgograd) was the chokepoint of flow of oil north to Moscow from the Caspian Sea. Hitler knew it. Stalin knew it. It was this, not the name of the city, that compelled the Russians to refuse to yield.
2) An astonishing number of horses were present and essentially decided the battle. Germans brought horses not suited to the weather. The Russians brought steppe ponies, far sturdier breed. These animals hauled the vast majority of supplies.
3) The Romanian oil fields fueled the 6th Army. Russia, as always, had infinite fuel.
4) Hitler was not a moron. The 6th Army was the victim of high level politics. Herman Goering told Hitler there was no reason to dispatch another army to break the encirclement because the Luftwaffe could provide entirely sufficient supplies from the air. It could not. It wasn’t even close, but Hitler had to listen to the advice of his experts and that’s what he was told.
5) The Russians had a spy in the German High Command and he had a communications channel to another spy in Switzerland, who erected big antennas and often Stalin knew of High Command orders before the 6th Army did.
6) The Germans numbered well over 100K, but more important, the Italians and Hungarians and Croatians and Romanians sent huge numbers of men. Remember, this was a paycheck and food and the Great Depression didn’t end like a light switch was flipped. Anyway, the German High Command had to always position those armies to keep the Italians between the rest, or they would start killing each other. The Soviets knew it and always knew where the Italians were. Consequence — this battle won the war. Long before serious US involvement. Germany lost 100s of thousands of troops to death or capture. No country can survive that.
A good reminder. Americans look at WW2 and all the machines we had and don’t know that The German and Russian armies were mostly transported by rail and on foot with a lot of horses to pull the gear. The Brits would have too if it wasn’t for lend-lease. The Germans and Russians had a relatively few motorized and and armored division. Yes they had huge tank battles but most of the Army marched.
Because of the mechanized nature of much of the war, few people realize just how large a role horses played in it. Hollywood shows tanks.
Many many thanks for your educational post. I will simply add, that with so many German men being killed, this is why Turks were brought in to help Germany rebuild after WW2
Are Russian women more fertile? Russkies did not bring in guest workers after World War Two.